Seduction, Metamorphoses, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (NL), 6 FEB – 25 MAY 2026
- koenvanmechelen
- 28 nov
- 3 minuten om te lezen
Bijgewerkt op: 5 dagen geleden
The prestigious Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam invites Koen Vanmechelen to participate in the group exhibition Metamorphoses.
Passion and desire, lust and jealousy, cunning and deceit — few classical texts have stirred the imagination of artists as deeply as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the eponymous exhibition artists as Titian, Correggio, Cellini, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rodin, Brancusi, Magritte, and Bourgeois rival the imaginative power and artistic vision of one of Antiquity’s greatest poets. Over 80 masterpieces will be brought together from museums and collections worldwide. This exceptional exhibition has been developed through close collaboration between the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and Galleria Borghese in Rome and will run from 6 February to 25 May 2026 in Amsterdam.
Highlights
Metamorphoses brings together more than 80 highlights from international collections. The works include Titian’s Danaë, painted for King Philip II of Spain; Tintoretto’s Minerva and Arachne; Correggio’s iconic Jupiter and Io, as well as Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle and Danaë (all painted for the Duke of Mantua); Caravaggio’s Narcissus; and Rodin’s marble Pygmalion and Galatea, presented alongside Gérôme’s painting of the subject. Three of Arcimboldo’s composite, grotesque faces will also be on display. In addition, the life-size bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa, made by the Dutch artist Hubert Gerhardt for the Duke of Bavaria, will be shown for the first time together with its model, the prototype for Cellini’s famous work of the same title.
The exhibition presents art from across the centuries in a variety of media, with painting, sculpture, precious metalwork and ceramics, as well as contemporary photography and video art.
Curator Frits Scholten selected Vanmechelen’s Seduction. “Vanmechelen transforms the ‘Crouching Venus’ into a hybrid being that brings seduction, metamorphosis and fate together in one sculpture. By replacing Venus’s head with that of a bull and the shell with a skull, he radically reverses classical symbolism. In this way, Seduction becomes the engine of evolution, from which ever new life forms arise.” In the Rijksmuseum, Seduction is given a place among artworks that depict the relationship between humans, myth and change for centuries.
Bible for artists
Very few texts from antiquity have inspired as many artists as Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid, 43 BCE–17 CE). In this monumental epic, he described a world filled with transformations of gods and humans into animals, plants or stones. It is with good reason that, in his 1604 Schilder-boeck, Karel van Mander described the work as a ‘Bible for artists’. This was by no means an exaggeration: after the Bible, Metamorphoses remained for centuries one of the most important and inexhaustible sources for painters, sculptors, engravers, composers, writers and poets. Its influence persists to this day.
Metamorphoses
‘All things change, but nothing dies’ is the message Ovid conveys in Metamorphoses, his narrative poem in which gods become animals, nymphs are transformed into trees, humans turn to stone, and stones become human. Many of the stories it contains explore interactions between gods and mortals, with love playing a major role – far from always with mutual consent. Violence and treachery also recur throughout the stories. The exhibition highlights the depiction of several iconic fables. They include the creation of the cosmos and the world from formless chaos; the story of the weaver Arachne, who is transformed by the jealous goddess Minerva into a spider to weave her webs for all eternity; and the affairs of Jupiter, the chief god, who repeatedly disguises himself – as a bull, a swan, in a shroud of mist, or as a shower of gold – to deceive his jealous wife Juno and his victims.
Exhibition Facts
Metamorphoses
6 February – 25 May 2026
Rijksmuseum
Museumstraat 1
1071 XX Amsterdam
Tickets and info: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/see-and-do/exhibitions/metamorphoses